Sunday Night Open Mic (WgNN_koTxvA)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=WgNN_koTxvA

uce us I’m doing well, how are you? Doing just fine, doing just fine. It’s the second Sunday of Advent. What do I have to complain about? Oh yeah. Absolutely stinkin’ nothing. Not Christmas. It’s not Christmas, it’s Advent still. That’s right. Chad, you driving back from another meeting? Driving back from the old detox meeting, yep, yep, yep. Were the Packers playing tonight? I think they played earlier today against the Bears in the reminder statement they won, but I don’t pay attention to them. Okay. I guess the Vikings won today too. It’s the Jets. It’s only relevant for me because everybody around me is a Vikings fan. One of my classmates from high school I think is the center for the New York Jets, so that’s kind of cool I guess. Nice. Yeah. Nice. That intro music there is quite spilling, so yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m still mooching off of Jacob’s Streamyard account, so he set that up and I’m too lazy to put that with like Gregorian chant or whatever, so we’re just going to keep it. I was going to say, I could send you a recording of some chant or something you could put on there. I could, I could. Maybe after Christmas. That week after Christmas, nobody needs a priest the week after Christmas, it’s great. Really? Yep. They’re all cured or something like that, eh? Yeah, yeah. They’re just… Yeah. So, did you have a good week? I had a pretty good week. Went up to a small town about an hour and a half north of here on Thursday night and had spiritual direction. Yeah, yeah. My spiritual director gave me a little attitude adjustment, it’s kind of like a chiropractor, you know, they just kind of throw you over the bench and everything’s back in shape. So that was real good. That was real good. Nice. And then, we, yesterday we had this vendor fair, like a Christmas vendor fair at our church where we had 75 different booths set up and people hocking their wares and when I told my dad about it, he made an uncomfortable allusion to the Gospels and the money changers and merchants outside the temple. And asked me if I had… I drove them out with a whip and I said no. Like, ah, there’s enough table flipping going on around here. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, yeah. Wow. Good stuff. Did you lay tile this week, Chad? I did lay tile this week and I’ll be laying tile again tomorrow and into the next week, God willing, the next 25 years. Awesome. Yeah. But last night, so a friend of mine in the program, I got a random text from this guy. He says, he says, I got some tickets for this event at a planetarium. We can’t go and so I thought you might be interested. And so I asked my wife and she said sure, we can go. And I never, I think I went, when I was a kid, I went to a planetarium. But I don’t really remember it. So we went and it was this show where… So, okay, first of all, I’ll just say this. The whole time, all I could think about was the dome in the top of the church and Jonathan Peugeot. That’s all I could think about in Christ. The whole time. It was like I had this creative revelation that if I had the crew and the money and the time, I think that the planetary dome movie theater is a very highly underused technology. Like you would like show planet, I mean, how would it be different than a planetarium? Okay, so at the planetarium, there’s a dome. Have you ever been to one of these? I have not, but I’ve seen enough movies where they’re featured where I think I know the concept. So it’s like a dome that’s a movie screen. Okay. And there’s a certain type of style of film that you would play on. Sometimes they do like national geographic type stuff like flying down into the Grand Canyon or whatever. Maybe you’re underwater. It’s like an immersive type experience. You’re really close to the screen and it’s like 57 feet across. It’s just a big circular screen. It’s concave. And what got me started on this, like I was excited about it, but the guy was like, the guy that made this show, he was like a Grammy winning musician. And so I thought, oh, this is going to be interesting. And it was just like geometric shapes and like everything was arbitrary and meaningless. And you’re like flying through these different shapes. And it was like, yeah, I was, it dawned on me like this is what John Christopher Joe is talking about. He got disillusioned with art school. Like everything about this particular film is arbitrary and meaningless. It’s really like it almost to me felt like a cry for help. It was super new agey. Like you can change the universe with your mind type stuff. But what I thought of was the experience I had at St. Stan’s when I walked into the church and was struck by awe. And I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if somebody made a film for this format where it’s like something like the ancient church or something? Like you’re walking, you’re walking through the cathedral at Chartres and just, you know, maybe you’ve got Bishop Barron in the background saying, friends, welcome to the wonder of Western civilization, something like that. Well, that was one way to do it. But I was thinking something more like not documentary, but like, like, let’s say it takes the images. It takes the images on the church and turns them into three dimensional scenes. And like, like, literally, I hate to use this word, but something like a psychedelic trip through the cosmos. Through the iconography of the church. And telling, getting the entire cosmic story with like the like chanting, like the Gregorian chants and everything, you know, like full. So it’s like a peek into the divine from a secular perspective, right? Not everybody’s going to walk into a church. Right. And not everybody’s not everybody who walks into a church is going to understand the story or that the church itself is telling a story. Excuse me. And so I thought, wow, how would it be where it’s like you’re fully immersed in like this, this experience of being walked through the Gospels or through the beginning of time to Revelation with this kind of technology. Maybe there’s no actors. Maybe it is all like animated or something. I don’t know. So this is like, like Fantasia in a planetarium for Jesus. Yes. Okay. Now I’m probably sure that’s for other people. I don’t know. That’s an interesting idea. Yeah, I mean, listen, I was like, so Fantasia was what my mom put on for us when she wanted us to take a nap. Because we had it on VHS video cassette. And I would never actually nap. I have a hard time napping to this day. I would just sit there and watch it though. Anyway, I think if you, I mean, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it could work but you’ve got to, you’ve got to get the resources to do that. And I think they’re like, they usually use them for say shows about the stars. Production of those things costs a fortune. I imagine they do. And is that the production of the planetarium itself or like even the film I imagine is really complicated to shoot, although it might be easier with computer generated images. Computer generated images have their own problems. When I made contact, I put it on Fox or Yosef was like, check this out in this company called 360 something. They actually, they say if you got a project in mind, we’ll help you figure it out or whatever. Of course you’ll have to have the money to do it. You know, my grandiose mind is like, oh, you talk to John and some other folks and see if they’ll produce it like a fully immersed story through iconography. Yeah, yeah, this sounds like an IMAX screen only more so. Now do you stand there? Like is this something we need to get done in 30 minutes because people don’t want to stand any longer than that? No, no, no, you’re sitting in like these refineries there. You’re totally. Okay, so you’re you’re just. Yeah, it’s it’s almost like ancient people sitting around watching the stars, huh? That’s right. Do you remember, do you remember the stars guys? You ever seen those before? I’ve seen one or two. One or two stars. You can have it be like, you know, like the way my my mind put the story together is you start a small group of people build a village and they build the church in the middle of the village. And this is all time lapse. And you build the village around the church and then all of a sudden you walk into the church. And as you walk in the churches, it goes into like, you know, day one where God says, let there be light. And then like the light starts and then like you just go from there. And I think you’d have more questions than answers. When you walk out of a film, that would be my hope. There almost be like content like kind of like, wow, what the heck did I just watch? Like intrigue, bother with intrigue. Hmm. Yeah. It’s an interesting idea for sure. I. Yeah. Gosh, I. Give us some money. Oh, boy. Yeah. Listen, guys, I don’t know what you guys think is going to happen, but inflation is not going to show slowdown. Sorry. It’s going to be a rough couple of years. Perfect time to be building a church right now. That’s my predictions anyway. And so if I could be wrong, I’ll take that. But. Oh, you really make me feel very secure in my mortgage. Oh, don’t worry. Your mortgage will someday afford a house, a loaf of bread. You know, you’re we’ll just say three hundred thousand dollars. That’ll pay for a loaf of bread. So everybody will be a millionaire. Yay. I can’t wait. Yeah. Mark says it’s the best time to have a mortgage. So. OK. Yeah. Hmm. I didn’t I didn’t mean to throw into access to. I frankly I frankly spent too much. Yeah, I frankly spend too much time reading financial news. Yeah. I’ve at least slanted towards the disastrous. So is that what you do with your free time mostly? That bridges of meaning. Oh, yeah. And I did Christmas cards on Friday, though. Oh, nice. Oh, I should get to that. Yeah. Christmas cards is great. It’s great. And the wacky thing is, is that as a priest, you know, I’ve got maybe like 80 or 90 people that I had. It might not even be that much. It might be more like 60 or 70. I haven’t looked at the numbers recently that I send cards to as a rule. But I have to order 200 cards because lots of people at the parish give me them. And I’m like, oh, Christmas cards are important to you. Let me send you one of mine. Yeah. Oh, there are your Christmas cards, the kind where you like you have your family on it and. Yep. That sort of thing. All of the important people. And you. Oh, yeah. All of them. I don’t know. I don’t know who else I would put. I mean, I guess I could take a picture with my parents. Yeah. Nobody would complain or think it’s weird, but I usually just have me looking holy. Yeah, that looks good, I think. Are you able to have a pet? I could. I don’t think I would. But I could. Yeah, I know I know priests who have dogs. I don’t think I’d want anything more complicated than a fish just because it’s just another thing to worry about. Hopefully I have like a neighbor that has a really friendly golden retriever that I could just pet whenever I need to pet a dog. Yeah. Yeah. They say worry works 90% of the time. I’m going to worry about robotic. Worry, worry, worry works for what? It comes true 90% of the time. Or it doesn’t. It helps prevent what you’re worrying about. So you can worry and it helps prevent what you’re worried about. See what I’m saying? Never mind. It could. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that’s I guess I look at myself and I think I don’t think I need more things to worry about. I could frankly probably do with less things to worry about. So it’s got to be, it’s got to be, you know, there are some people who should worry more. Chad’s got a point, right? Like if you just worried about this a little bit, your life would be so much better. But you’re temperamentally incapable of worrying about it. So your life is constantly chaotic. Is that what you meant, Chad? Or am I putting words into your mouth? No, it’s it’s like this joke, you know, like with all that worrying and look, nothing happened. You know, it’s like it’s one of these old timer AA sayings where they’re like, yeah, worry works 90% of the time. Basically, all you do is worry. Nothing happens. So for the least, you’re not worried. Yeah. OK. OK. I’m sorry I didn’t get the joke and made you explain it. It’s OK. It’s I care about. I also get it. Mark is coming out with the hard news that everyone needs to hear. Getty pigs like birds are not real. Well, thank you, Mark. You’re so brave. I’ve had so great. They weren’t real, Andrew. Well, maybe they were the last. It was an NSA spy bot. What about jackalopes? Oh, those are totally real. We got them outside the rectory. Oh, nice. I mean, until I did the solemn St. Michael prayer over the entire and the jackalopes went away. Don’t worry about that. Interesting. Is that lady here was complaining about my office? White bags still sitting there. I have nowhere else to put it. You can put it like in another spot on your desk. No, she’s made it a problem. And yeah. Yeah. I guess that’s what we do with problems. Yeah, we just amplify them. We’re looking forward to Gaudete Sunday, Andrew. Oh, yeah. You think you think in your priest is going to wear pink? Probably. Yeah. I’m planning on getting my pink on. It’s pretty great. You excited to put your pink on? Yeah. I mean, the stuff we have here is OK. A lot of these parishes, you know, they look I know technically it’s supposed to be called Rose. But if you take any four year old and ask them what color that is, they’re going to say pink. And I’m just not going to run away from that. So thank you for your input, Jordan. But it’s it’s it’s pink. It’s pink. Is there a cape on it? I thought it was pink. Mark says, Pink Priest’s not a good look, but it’s traditional, Mark. Anyway, what do you what do you know? What do you know? Does it have a cape? Because I was wondering if my my my pastor had an obsession with Batman. It’s like all of the robes he’s wearing, they seem to have capes. I thought that’s pretty cool. I wonder if that’s where the Superman and Batman cape came from from liturgical garb. I don’t know. We do not. It’s it’s more like a poncho than a cape. Yeah. That’s why Baptists don’t baptize kids. Oh, that’s why Baptists don’t baptize kids. OK, I thought it had something else to do with something else. So, yeah. But the stuff we have here looks pretty decent. It’s not like the one hundred dollar, one hundred percent polyester stuff I’ve had to deal with in other places. It’s a little nicer. Oh, your rose rose vestments are liturgical rose vestments. I never thought that the priests look bad in rose vestments. Yeah. And you only get to use them literally two Sundays out of the year. It’s like. You got a short window. I think there’s some priests who are like, oh, I don’t wear pink. Where does the traditional vestments come from? Basically, formal wear from like fifth century Rome. So like the traditional chasables, it’s kind of like an outer garment, something that you would wear to stay warm and keep the keep the rain out. And then the Dalmatics that the deacons wear, those had sleeves because it was it was for the table waiters and they needed to be able to reach over the table and like pull cups and plates off and put dishes on. And so they had sleeves on their vestments. And so it’s OK. The deacons are the ones who assist the priests at the altar. They should be wearing these Dalmatics. And white robes. I think we’re I think we’re used in Roman triumphs, triumphal procession. And since Jesus is the best winner of all time, we wear white. So anyway, that’s my that’s some Father Eric theology there and Father Eric history, I suppose. But we’ll see if it’s it’s any good. You know, things have changed a little bit since the fifth century, like over time, the investments change, cut and change shape. But they started like using stiffer material. And then it all changed in the 1950s for some reason. And then there was like more lace and less lace. And can we use polyester and all this exciting stuff? I’m glad they don’t have like NASCAR patches like sponsorships. Yeah, that would be maybe kind of dangerous for anyone who’s sponsoring them. I mean, we kind of kind of like. I’m going to see if I can pull up something here. Pull up something here. All right. All right. Let’s take a look at this. We’ll share screen to share. Oh, I assume this is a zoom in on that one. Right. It’s like, oh, we’ve got this image of the Holy Family there. Yeah. It’s that’s kind of like a sponsorship. For sure. I like it. Yeah, we’ve got here’s a here’s another one. Right. Gloria and Excelsis Deo. Check it out. Wow. It’s kind of like a sponsorship. Gloria and Excelsis Deo. We can get like a oh, I’ve got one. Yeah, there’ll be something great on this. Check it out. Oh, no, I made a white. What? That’s supposed to do. Look at that. That’s kind of like a NASCAR sponsorship, isn’t it? I guess. Yeah. All right. Enough of that, Silliman. Sure. Church sponsored by Jesus, Mary and the Holy Spirit. Oh, Mark, if you could study theology, you wouldn’t say such silly things. I mean, don’t you study theology, Father? Oh, I do. I’m trying to Mark. He refuses to learn anything about the Bible. He’s so is where he’s. I mean, I don’t refuse, but I usually don’t get around to it very much. You’re going to church that that puts you ahead of Mark. We love you, Mark. Mark, you’re my favorite gargoyle. I try to listen to the readings. Today I opened up at random to Esther and it was another one of those. Wow. I can’t remember exactly where it was. I was just sitting there in church and I opened up at random to. Oh, no chance between towers. No. Sermons by Father Eric. Today’s session sponsored by the Holy Spirit, moving you even when you don’t know it. Don’t you always not know it? When the marketing plans for you all and I’m not feeling the appreciation. Oh, boy, I guess we get what we pay for, right? Yeah, yeah. Wonder if Chad will be back. You know, Wisconsin, they don’t have very good Internet out there. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Hey. I can see him, but can we hear him? He’s frozen again. Somebody’s finally learned his secret identity. Can you hear me? There you are. I could hear that. He needs to get a cable connection to his phone. I don’t really. I’ve never really like had to go between towers where I live, which is interesting. It’s because you live in an overpopulated urban hellscape. Sorry. Just New Jersey. Well, yeah. I mean, it could be like that where I live. But, you know, there are there are a lot of rural areas. And I feel like we’ve got different definitions of rural here. Well, not rural like what is it? Minnesota or Dakota, North Dakota. Yeah, North Dakota. You can go miles between any human habitation pretty easily, especially the farther west. You go. We’ve got more cattle than people here, which is great because, you know, it’s great. It’s great. Yeah. I mean, I guess it makes sense, though, because we’re the garden state, not the like mega farm state or anything like that. So little rural areas is fine. Nice rolling hills. You know, I’ve only I have negative things to say about New Jersey, mostly because my memory of it was on a high school trip to New York City. OK. And we stayed in Newark. Oh, yeah, of course you did. Yeah. Right. Because it was it was convenient. And there was a hotel that could afford that we could afford for our high school trip and all that. But man, that was just drive down south like 20 miles. Yeah. Yeah. Look great. But yeah, Newark, Newark did not spark joy. No, it tends not to do that. Maybe that’s why everybody thinks New Jersey so bad is they just fly through Newark all the time. Yeah, could be. Wow. I think has Chad dropped completely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if he was getting close to home. Yeah. Hmm. Nice. Mark, a true son of the Northeast says New York City Hotel, Pennsylvania, across from Penn Station. Cheap, ideal, especially for a show at Madison Square Garden. OK, not planning any New York City trips soon, but who knows what the future will bring? You know, maybe maybe Chad will will come up with his brilliant, his brilliant idea. All right. It’s it’s Mark again. He’s hello. Oh, and Laura, you can come on here, too. Please, please. She’s busy fasting from computers. I know she’s she’s in the comments. She’s literally in the comments section. She might be giving herself a break on Sundays. OK, she’s been hacked on YouTube then. That’s the only possible explanation. Mark, I’ve been thinking about you were talking about. So I made that comment on Jacob’s stream that the church has been really consistent on calling out one particular type of evil. Hi, Laura. Thanks for joining us. Laura. And if you haven’t if you haven’t spent much time around Catholic people, especially women, you wouldn’t know exactly all the pro-life work that they’re doing. That’s extremely consistent since 1960 something. Yeah, no, no, I get that. Well, and I would argue that pro-life is proper protesting, which is something I learned from my friend, my friend in Iceland who knows English better than any of the people that live in the United States. Peter, who basically pointed out that protest is a positive statement about something. It’s not an identification against something. And so you don’t have the anti-abortion march. You have the pro-life march. And if you haven’t heard the pro-life march from I think it was 2019 when Ben Shapiro did the 10 points. They’re the 10 most devastating screw you. You’re definitely scientifically, logically, rationally, and reasonably incorrect about abortion if you’re if you’re not against it. Arguments I’ve never heard. Like they’re just they’re rock solid arguments. Like there’s no you ain’t got nothing. You get zero on any of the 10. Like it’s and there’s 10 of them. So so like I get that. But but a I don’t like that’s still not calling out evil. Right. It’s calling out goodness, which is great. Let’s do more of that. We need more of that. Right. But also really I think you’re really splitting hairs here. No. From my experience, pro-life people are always calling out evil. Yeah. Well, the march for life certainly doesn’t do that. I don’t I haven’t heard any of them actually call out anything. I mean, they say, well, I’m not we don’t you know, we don’t believe in that. Okay, fine. Don’t believe in that is, you know, and from their perspective, this is strong language. Now we’re getting serious. Capitals are like that. Right. But really, I mean, that’s not you know, that’s not enough. Like, come on. That’s and that’s fine. Like there’s nothing in absolutely do that. Like not not trying to say don’t do the good things. Do all the good things. But also do more good things and and stronger because some, you know, and not all the time. Like but we’re in a time now where everything has changed and we haven’t acknowledged. Well, we’re doing things like we did them before. But we’re not it’s not before anymore. Like things have changed. Yeah. Right. And so, so for example, I’ve been trying to call people out on Twitter and such not when they go, well, I know what Elon Musk is doing. He’s little bit of it. And I’m like, you have no idea what Elon Musk is doing. You’re a moron in business compared to him. Period. And I don’t even think I’m an Elon Musk supporter in one way. All of his businesses except Twitter are stupid. Actually, like that’s that’s the only the future. I think I got that from you. But he’s selling you the future, isn’t he? That’s his whole thing. Yes. He’s selling you the future. And like I’m not against selling the future plans for Mars and electric cars, but they’re both daunt. You know who’s not going to Mars? You. For all values of you. You know who’s never living on Mars? You, your children or your children’s children. Why? Because human beings will not ever be living on Mars. You will have to get a genetic modification or two to get on Mars when that becomes possible. If that becomes possible, if we can get Mars terraform, if we can figure out what genetic modification it’s on and on and on. Mars has an inner core, right? That blew my mind when I figured out that Mars has an inner core. We have to deal with the occasional earthquakes here. And that’s tragic. And it’s really bad. But it’s worse than the world where there are no earthquakes, because the world where there are no earthquakes means that we have an inner core. And the solar winds will eventually strip the atmosphere off the planet. But with our with our molten moving core generates a powerful magnetic field that diverts the solar winds for the most part around our atmosphere. You can fix that. How can let’s just build one of those around Mars. We just need to have outrageous radiation shielding everywhere. Yeah, no, you don’t know about the Van Allen belts. We can build a giant electromagnetic coil around Mars. No, no, the Van Allen belts are part of what you’re talking about, the magnetic field that the earth generates, which you can also put a temporary magnetic field in place and or strengthen your existing magnetic field, which we may have done accidentally. If you set off these little things called nuclear weapons and so nuclear weapons could very well be the thing that enables us to put an atmosphere on Mars. That is at least theoretically viable. But you still can’t have a baby on Mars because the gravity is wrong. So you still need genetic modification to actually live there for any reasonable length. That’s what I’m saying. So he’s selling all these dreams, which is which is like I’m not I’m like, that’s brilliant. He sells dreams. That’s why he’s the wealthiest man, because that’s what money represents is hopes and dreams. It doesn’t represent the things in the here and now. Right. Right. See my video on navigating pattern. Just it was it was it had helped improve my cultural cognitive grammar. I’m glad to hear that. But the work he’s doing with Twitter, for example, is actually super important. But judging like believing for half an instant that Elon Musk was doing a poll to let on Trump or whoever else back onto the platform. And that was his plan all along or his plan in a moment. You really haven’t been paying attention. Elon Musk is at least as good. Well, maybe not as good. Elon Musk may be as good as Trump at getting free advertising out of, for lack of a better term, the stupid people. Because really, at this point, like you fell for Trump for four years. Every time you pulled the trick, you did it every single time. Every time he said something, something deliberately inflammatory like hamburgers stacked up to the moon. You reported on it because you’re that naive. You’re that stupid because at a certain point you’re stupid. Right. So so Elon Musk does the same sort of thing, except he does it differently. But he’s smart. He’s better at it. I think he’s better at it. I don’t know that he’s better at it, but he’s certainly smart. And he gets enormous amount of money very quickly. So you make all kinds of arguments for Trump. Couldn’t get that he had started with more money and couldn’t get that much more money. Fair enough. But but the idea that he didn’t do that on purpose, knowing full well that his plan was going to be no, no, we’re just going to basically let everybody back on who didn’t violate the rules. You’ve got to be a little dumb. Like, I’m sorry, but like you really don’t understand what’s going on. Like you’re lacking long term thinking or you’re not understanding theory of mind that other people have long term thinking, even if you don’t. Like he was he planned all that from the beginning. And did he plan every detail out on a piece of paper before? No. But like he is a very good intuition for these things. And I think it’s it. That’s the problem is that there’s a difference between like Elon Musk going into Twitter and injecting joy because he did. He injected joy. He brought back Babylon B. Right. And all this stuff. In fact, I heard that earlier today. There’s a bunch of theories going around that the only reason why he bought Twitter was to put Babylon B back on there because he understands full well that without satire, things corrupt, which is actually true. What does injecting joy mean? So basically, this is something this is something I heard. Right. Is that the Twitter feeds in Japan had been primarily dominated by politics. But after he got some some new moderators in there, they like overnight switch to being about video games and anime, which, you know, I we have a rules here. This is a no anime zone. Thank you, Robert. Which is not going to do it here. But that does bring some people joy. I have to admit. So, so yeah. It’s a good but it’s a good question, Andrew. And I can’t answer it. I can tell you what happened. I can’t tell you how it happened or like what does joy look like. Do you have one on your shelf? So one one piece of joy that I have is this little guy. Right. So this is one of my gargoyles. Hold up. Hold up. No, wrong one. Wrong one. I don’t know how to do it. Me, me, damn it. Me. I guarantee you. Me. I’m trying. It’s a question for you. So he sits on a desk and the feet hang over the edge or a table or whatever. And he has a laptop. I didn’t spark joy. I love gargoyles and I love technology. And this is the union of them. It’s like the greatest object of all time as far as I can tell. Right. So that’s a piece of joy. I think there’s idolatry going on there. Have you offered animal sacrifice to this? There’s nothing. There’s nothing in my ethos preventing idolatry. Guys, sorry. That’s a big deal. Nothing to me. But that’s how you inject joy. I mean, this is one of the other strengths of Verbeckis’ work, for example, is he talks about there are real things that are not material or physical. Right. Like E equals MC squared is his example, which is dumb, but whatever. The point’s correct. Right. And so there is a thing called joy. And there was a day of joy. I think it was a week ago, Thursday or something. It might have been Friday. I forget. Where basically Twitter just exploded with joy. And Elon Musk is the one that caused that to happen very clearly. Like, it’s not a it’s not a hidden secret. It’s not Gnostic knowledge from the past. You know, it’s just like that happened. And that’s good. Like this is this is great. So so that definitely happened. Can I can I tell you how to reproduce that? No, I mean, I can tell you this. This laptop gargoyle brings me joy every time I see him. I can tell you that I have another gargoyle too. I can find him, but I clean my office. That’s bringing me joy, at least for the moment. All righty. Well, one of the things that I found most interesting about Milo Yiannopoulos’ first visit back from his exile on Tim Poole’s was he actually talked about joy and he talked about like the Christian innovation. I never heard it this way. I thought it was interesting. The Christian innovation was that came to Europe was a way of producing joy constructively. That through paganism, joy was brought about through revelry. Right. So you’d have like a rave like experience. You’d have a crazy weekend and that would bring you joy, but it would cost you something immensely. Right. So you’d be sacrificed along with that. And Christianity brought with it a way to connect to joy that was constructive. Right. That you could have a transcendent experience that would bring about joy, but it wouldn’t come with that cost of the burnt offering or the weekend of revelry. So instead of getting this sort of Dionysian joy, you would have instead. I don’t know. The Holy Spirit. The connection to the Holy Spirit. Exactly. The Holy Spirit joy. Against which there is no law. So the Pentecostal joy maybe is a way of describing. Sure. Pentecostal joy versus Dionysian joy. That sounds positively scholarly. Yeah. Yes. Pentecostal joy. So what if, Father Eric, what if the failure of the body of the churches and the members of the church, right, to properly call out evil forces the hand of those in charge to do it, but poorly. Like much less. And then maybe this isn’t as much of a problem in Catholicism today, but it’s certainly a problem with the Baptists and a lot of the Protestants, right, where you get those fire and brimstone preachers, right, because now they’re the avatars for all the evil that’s not being called out. It’s concentrated in one person. And so all of a sudden, instead of using plain language to say that guy, what he’s doing is no good. Right. Now you get this spirit, right, injected into one person, the preacher, right. And it’s too much. We can’t use real world examples because it’s the spirit of, say, 30 congregation lists or all at once or something like that. And that has to come out as fire and brimstone because there’s just too much energy in it, right. There’s too much power, you know, funneled into one person. And so the failure of people to call out bad behavior and or evil is causing sort of an imbalance. Right. And I would call that a corruption. But imbalance is strong enough in the church in that particular way. You call that fire there. Yeah. I had something to say on this, but I’ll let you go ahead. So a little bit of history. If you go to a place like Ireland or Quebec, one of these places that’s had a dramatic collapse in Catholic practice, one of the commonly cited issues is that the priests were both kind of lazy but also overly intrusive. They were kind of busybodies. Right. And so you’d have these stories of like in the 1960s, the priest would show up at your door and say, why aren’t you having more children? Are you using contraceptives? Which like that’s a no. That’s a no. Hard no from Father Eric here. So I guess part of the part of the delicacy that you need to call out evil with is it like it needs to be done in an effective way. Respecting people’s freedom and all that sort of thing. And it needs I think different members of the body of Christ need to do this in a different way. Right. Sure. Absolutely. So, you know, your clergy, like maybe they’re the big guns. And if there’s something like that really, you know, needs to be addressed, it’s like violating sacred principles. That’s that’s when the clergy would call it out. But like the more worldly things. So anyway, that’s a thought I’ve been having. And you told me to share my thoughts of there. I did all of it being channeled into the preacher like in a like in a positive feedback loop that gets really weird, really quick. And then there’s like too much weight on the preacher rather than on the body. You know, like you’re placing all the weight on the top of the head instead of, you know, evenly distributing on the shoulders in the back. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well said. I guess that’s possible. I don’t spend a whole lot of time at Baptist churches. So if you’re seeing it there, perhaps it’s there. But I would I would argue that the the the traumatized Baptist are seeing it there or we’re seeing it there. Right. And I would argue the traumatized Catholics were certainly seeing that, you know, certainly in my family. Right. And then at least the French Canadian churches. But also but also Italian Catholic churches as well. I guess I know a number of Italians. So, yeah, I mean, I’ve I’ve seen that. I don’t know how bad it is on the Irish side, although I’ve heard it’s it’s pretty bad. I mean, my my mother’s mother stayed in church forever. So she didn’t have a problem with it. But she also divorced and never remarried. You know, trauma all over the place there. Yeah, she was a wonderful person, like really, really one. Not that she didn’t have a temper, didn’t have her problems and all that. But but yeah, she was a real I mean, she paid real attention to to other people. And, you know, she was really sensitive to the people around her, we’ll say. Yeah. It’s always going to be it’s a pretty early difficult problem because. I mean, I look at somebody like James Lindsay, right? Like Mr. Anti-Woke, you know, and like that is that is what he does. He just spends hours reading critical literature so he can just destroy it, you know. And I look at him and I’m like, oh, I’m going to go to the library. Yeah. Well, how can you be happy? But this goes back to Peterson’s don’t use the language of your enemies. It’s like, I agree. Don’t use the language of your enemies. I disagree that he’s he’s that he’s not happy. I mean, I like full of joy might be on. But he but he has he has zeal. Right. He has a mission. And that means he has meaning and fulfillment. I think he’s a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very good person. And I would not say that he’s not a man of meaning, but he’s a man of fulfillment. I certainly wouldn’t accuse him of feeling meaningless or in some sort of nihilistic state. He’s very much it’s a different person. I guess what I see and what I wouldn’t want for anybody I care about would be that zeal without peace. I get really wound up about something or another. And then I just go and I sit in the chapel and I pray about it. I talk to the Lord. And then I look up at the crucifix and I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s what it’s like. You know, and I can I can just kind of tune things down and all right. Yeah, this isn’t good. That’s what life is like. So I can I can return to that peaceful place even while acknowledging. Evil. Yeah, yeah, and it’s important. And actually, I mean, to get to that larger points, I like to how Mark used the term imbalance when bringing up this topic, because I think that’s very key. And, you know, I I’m obsessed, as you know, right now with the theological virtues, right, and of hope and faith and how they need to be connected in opponent processing through the spirit of charity or love. Right. And I think that what I see is an imbalance that has been aggravated by the birth of the Enlightenment and perpetuated where we have some some of the faith. I think Catholicism is gone in this direction is the imbalance has moved towards mercy. And what you see in a response to that is you see an imbalance within the Protestant movement of of going too far into faith, of having this intense sense of zeal and faith, whereas in Catholicism, we’ve gone too far into hope and mercy. Right. So the hope and mercy going too far into the hope and mercy has creates this passivity, right, in in sort of like maybe a sense of lukewarm faith, right? Because it’s your it’s your fault. You’re away from the faith. You’re into the mercy or you’re forgiving. And there’s there’s room for that. And that’s exactly what you’re saying there. But but with the with the Protestant response, or at least some of the process, there’s so many schisms, it’s hard to talk about process as a whole. But but the the Protestant response that I think Mark is alluding to is the intense faith and zeal that has been part of the response to that. Now, when faith and zeal goes into excess, it’s easier to call out because faith is is connected to actualization. Right. So that becomes you see a person acting out and being the the the firebrand preacher. Right. You see them act. There’s someone because they’re taking actions, they can easily. Yeah, they become an avatar. They become accountable for those actions. They’re actually part of faith is accepting responsibilities for your actions. So you’re actualizing your potential. So you’re doing stuff just like you were talking about that the priests in Quebec and going in and sort of checking on their individual parishioners and looking in their their dressers for any contraceptives that may be going on. I don’t know if it ever got that bad. Maybe it did, man. The old world is a different world. I’m not used to it. But that’s that’s my point of extreme faith. But but the excess of mercy is harder to call out because it it is the abandonment of responsibility and actually the abandonment of self into the collective. Right. So it’s you’re actually you’re you’re when you’re in a state of mercy, of course, you’re appealing towards the system or the to to to grant you mercy, to release the burden from you. And so the excess of mercy is much it’s that’s much more insidious. But I mean, it’s it’s to see what it looks like. We have fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel. Right. Right. Yeah. There’s no such thing as a house made out of gingerbread. Yeah. The gingerbread house where everything is permitted. And then what you see is that you well, you know, and at the end of the day, the witch who can’t have children and won’t have children on her own just has you there to devour you. Yes. Right. Or you see what’s happening with the German church in the in the city. And that’s not only right where you. Well, that’s just regular old communist takeover. But I don’t know. I don’t know if you guys saw the Q&A that Van der Klay did about an hour and I got in on that. Yeah. And the reason why is because Ethan was telling you about something that I had heard from other people. And then we talked about my answer or his answer and my in my reply later. And Sally Jo came up with I think part of the problem is people are substituting tolerance or not substituting confusing tolerance and mercy. And it’s like, oh, no, no, no. If you have tolerance, you don’t need mercy because you have made a judgment. So that’s not good. Right. And I think that’s that that plays into all this. Right. Because I think the problem is that people are afraid to give mercy because they’re equating it with pity and all these other things that are allegedly bad, which I don’t think are bad. But, you know, anything can be thought of as bad. Right. And that’s the problem when you don’t have taller when you when you don’t have the ability to be mercy, merciful because you’re too tolerant. You never get the mercy, but you feel like you’ve been merciful. And that and what the boundary that creates these that stops the imbalance, what creates the boundary is the spirit of charity. Right. Is the loving relationship. That’s why St. Paul tells us that it’s it’s the primary virtue. Right. It’s above the two theological virtues. It’s the most one. Am I am things just got a lot quieter. Am I still being heard? Yes, you are. Andrew, we had some complaints about your clicking and background noise coming from your stream. OK. OK. Why did I recommend a fine audio filtering service like Crisp for only five dollars a month? You could have all of your background noise filtered out automatically using computer algorithms. Are you using code father Pig Mac for it? Oh, they had better send me some money for that. Yeah. Sorry. I’m playing six right now. Yeah. Protestantism is spreading through the south. It’s not good. OK, it’s all good. It’s all good. Yeah. So I think you guys are actually pretty well describing the problem well, because because the way my man Thomas Aquinas talks about mercy is is it is in order to have mercy be used properly. You always have to have reference to a higher principle which can which can, you know, take that action. So, you know, yeah, just just mercy is is the inverse of zeal because mercy is the movement from faith to hope. Right. There’s only mercy is only sensible. And if there is faith that you’re drawing an exception to, right, that there is some law that’s being broken or some rule that we are now bending. That’s what what mercy is. Right. And of course, that’s something that that Christ’s endorses long as it’s within that charitable relationship. And you’re not destroying the law or replacing the law. You’re fulfilling the law. Right. That’s what Christ came to do. The but and zeal is the opposite movement. Zeal is the movement that takes us back from the hope like the excess of hopes to back to faith. No, it’s like you guys are starting to talk nonsense. We I need to actually and that’s what actually I think that would be what Elon Musk is bringing in Twitter as he’s bringing zeal. Right. And he’s like he is actually actually he’s becoming the point of responsibility saying this is this is filled with nonsense. No one is accountable. I’m going to become the lightning rod of responsibility for the organization. That’s the strong man or the heroic epic is that is that move towards faith of zeal. Right. And if it’s done correctly, he goes too far, then it will be good. But he can you can take the zeal, of course, to an excess, just like you can take the mercy to the exceeding create an imbalance. But right now, the joy that that Elon is bringing is the fact that he is. He’s bringing us he is his zeal is is re is recreating the balance, right, is restoring the balance. Yeah. And I guess having him in charge. Go ahead, Andrew. Oh, I was just going to say, I don’t know if it’s excess of mercy. I think I like what Mark said, how it’s more like tolerance because I think it is more like a tolerance that’s being given of. Of, you know, not even declaring what’s wrong, not not so much forgiving what’s wrong, which is what mercy is. Oh, it’s a confusion between tolerance and mercy. Yeah. But that’s I think that that’s like the false hope situation. Like that’s when you’re to already, you know, the law has already been broken at that point. Right. Because you’re no, there’s no if you’re if you are like some of the people that are more on the I don’t know if it’s even tolerance, but there’s people that would say when something’s done wrong, they don’t even say that it’s wrong. They just right. Like there’s no forgiveness. It’s it’s oh, that wasn’t wrong. You can’t you can’t get to mercy if you don’t if people don’t transgress. And if you have too much tolerance, nobody can transgress. And so everything’s fine. And so we’ll have drag queen story hour. Just like like and then if you speak up against it, they say you need more tolerance. And to those people, I say you come here and try to give me tolerance. I’ll show you intolerance real quick. Like and they go away because they know I’ll do it and they know they’re weak and can’t withstand the force of my will. But if you want to boil this down to force of will, you’re all going to lose that plan. Pick a better plan. Pick a religion that saves you from people like me, because that’s who you need saving from, at least in this world. Oh, my goodness. That was another I think that there’s there’s some like what he’s saying there, though. There’s some some interesting to say, because that’s actually because, you know, he’s he’s bringing like, you know, he’s bringing in the intolerance. He’s sort of stopping that that Gnostic dream world because they are part of it is there they create these these layers of of socialization of politeness. They’re you know, the the Gnostic world they’re creating can only exist in this bubble from heavily insulated from reality from the bare metal of like finding food, water and and dealing with. Yeah, unpleasant yourself, right? You don’t you don’t realize that the the differences between men and women, if you’re all sitting around, you know, staring into the black the black screens. But when you have to go out and drive a horse or a plow behind two ox, it’s like all of a sudden that upper body strength is kind of useful. Yeah. Yeah. Or you wanted to get saved from a building. Do you want a firefighter who is a woman who can’t save you from a building? Do you want a large guy who can drag you out of the burning building? It’s a classic example that’s that’s been floating around. Right. And so do I have tolerance for, you know, all female firefighter crews? No, I don’t. And, you know, this is the the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Right. Is this this over I think is connected to this thing that Mark’s talking about about the the tolerance or the the imbalance of mercy gets you to that place where, you know, that you are you are necessarily a hypocrite because you’re going to be speaking. You know, you’re you’re going to be virtue signaling. You’re going to be saying that you’re tolerant of these things, but you can actually function that way. Right. Right. So you’re so you’re and you see this in the reality, right. So we’ll talk about like, oh, you know, we’re doing all this hiring. We’re we’re we’re doing this ER this ER the HR stuff. We’re doing all this this hiring, you know, based on they’re not going to say quotas. I forget I forget their jargon. But basically, you know, we’re doing this diversity hiring. But ultimately, in the push comes to shove, they’re still going to be doing some hiring based on merit to keep things functioning. Right. So there’s going to be they’re going there. There’s going to be hypocrisy there in order for the system to function at all. And that’s that’s the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Right. In that sense of that, Jesus was calling out is that, you know, they would they would speak like he would, but they wouldn’t actually they they they virtue signal they as the common jargon for it now, but they would actually do the low cost thing of saying that they would they believe these things, but they wouldn’t actually live them or they wouldn’t live with live with the consequences of them. Right. So yeah. So you have these virtual corporations are in that sort of situation where they don’t actually they, you know, they’ll put up their their avatars, their Twitter avatars. And do all this ESG stuff as as they get away with. But ultimately, they’re not they’re they’re they’re hypocrites on on the deeper level. Right. But I mean, I think and that’s part of the problem. It’s it’s not like tolerance is not optional. Right. And and also a lack of tolerance is also not optional, because again, if you’re too tolerant, you’re not making judgments. And in order to do anything at all, including think as such, you have to make judgments. You have to separate the light from the darkness. You have to make judgments. Right. And so people are all like, oh, we shouldn’t be judgmental. It’s like, no, that’s saying you shouldn’t act in the world. Yeah, actually. Like, actually. So what? So hold on. I just want to make one point. So what what happens is they talk about tolerance, say over here. Right. But then they have no tolerance over here. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Because they kind of, you know, pushed it all to one side. And then so that this is this is the whole look, what are you intolerant of intolerance problem? Right. It’s the same problem. It’s just a different statement of it. Yeah, that’s that’s actually the Marcusean repressive tolerance or they have to have another. And he’s a postmodern Mark. Yeah. Yeah. And James Lindsay has a lot to say about him. But yeah, and he’s part of the reason we got into the mess. So it’s actually a conscious tactic on a lot of the Marxist, what you’re experiencing there, where they actually will they know that they are that they’re applying this double standard tactically. Everything from the left needs to be tolerated, no matter how extreme anything that’s not left, no matter what it is, has to be repressed brutally. Right. That’s that’s so the tolerance. Yeah. The tolerance. The tolerance isn’t universal, but they say that it is because this is what what what postmodernism leads to. And a lovely chat with Chese the other day about postmodernism and why it’s reprehensible and has no redeeming qualities. So, yeah, I think that’s that’s really important. But on I just what you’re also I want I would say, Mark, is you’re rediscovering faith. Right. Or the faith side of the equation, because that’s because what I what I see the theological virtues doing is they’re actually sort of the touchstones that form of Reveke’s three R’s of like relevance, realize a recursive relevance realization. That’s it. It’s the recursive process of discernment. And what’s that what’s moving or what they’re moving around between is hope. And that’s how you discern things. And the discerning side, the faith side of it, like what you’re talking about is is all these words that have been demonized because they want to keep these false hopes alive. Right. So the other one, the stereotypes, like we can’t live without stereotyping. Stereotyping is literally not optional. There’s a lot of stuff that a lot of stuff that postmodernism destroys or tries to that is not that is not optional. Yeah, that’s true. But for Vicky hasn’t gotten to discernment yet because he’s just put it in the relevance realization box and he’s going to deal with that black box later. Yeah. But so here’s what’s in the black box or what I believe is in the black box is is the the stereotyping is simply taking multiple instances and generating a type that is useful for for discernment for cast for then, you know, the discrimination. In other words, they’ve ended up so. But if it’s a if it’s if it’s good faith, if it’s a if it’s an accurate stereotype of what you’re trying to avoid or what you’re trying to seek, then it’s then the discernment or the discrimination will be good. The problem is with bad faith, with bad stereotypes that are going to create lots of false positives or or false. Is it false negatives, false positives? I’m forgetting my language. Basically, you’ll be lots of error, right? If you if your stereotype creates lots of area error, then it’s a bad stereotype. And that’s a problem. But if your process is a problem with the original stereotype, but if your identification system is negative, in other words, if you’re only identifying against and that’s what people on the left do, right? They don’t say I’m a Vaxer. I’m a proud Vaxer. They don’t say that. They don’t say that. They say you’re an anti-vaxxer. They’re not identifying for something or with something. They’re identifying against something. Yeah. And so you can’t create if you’re identifying against. Well, that’s actually part of that. What that that that what I was talking about before, the that abandonment of responsibility of becoming the locust of the actualization potentialization is no risk. If you’re not aware of responsibility, if you’re for something, right, then you’re actually sort of saying I’m bringing this into the world. But if you are just I’m against that, then you can sort of disappear into the crowd and the mob and largely like the left is for the system. They’re always demonizing like they’re actually they they they’re probably rely on. No, no, they’re not for it. They rely on it because they’re parasites. They’re automatically parasitic. What they’re for and against and all of this is unconscious. Like I don’t like this. They know exactly what they’re doing. No, no, there are some things they know exactly what they’re doing, but most things they’re just being ruled by the spirit. They have they have no idea what they’re doing. Well, I think the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. Right. So there’s some people who are evil. Conscious. You know, I know they don’t they don’t believe that. Yeah, I know they don’t believe that. Yeah. Right. But it’s but there are some people who are evil enough and ingenious enough that they have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. And they they’re just functionally. I don’t think so. And you don’t like you don’t even need that. You don’t need that. Like you don’t you don’t need the world to be fully rational. You don’t need any of that. Right. You just need four bad actors with different goals that lead to the same proximal goal. And then you have a you have a you have a riot in the streets. Like it’s not it’s not that hard. They don’t need to understand the other three groups. They don’t need you. You don’t need that. You don’t you don’t need that level of conspiratorial thinking. Like it’s just not required. But read George Lukacs or Paulo Fieri and books are evil. Not reading books. No, they are evil. They are coming up with good descriptions and saying and saying, well, this is an excellent predictor like Brett Weinstein did. Right. But they’re going to fall into the Brett Weinstein trap that he fell into with Robert Wright, which is they’re basically going to come down to a reductionist theory about how and why something’s working that basically culminates in a conspiracy theory that is wrong. Like Brett Weinstein did did like that will happen. You’re trying to over rationalize, over explain the world. And that leads to reductionism. And now you can’t do anything about it. Derrick asks, what do Paul and Jesus mean, Father Eric, when they say not to judge? How is it distinct from Mark’s point about the necessity of judgment? So the way this has been taken up into the way we talk about these passages is to say that we could certainly judge the actions of somebody as being good or evil, helpful or unhelpful, worthy of emulation versus worthy of not emulating. That is something we’re called upon to do. And it would be impossible to read the Bible intelligently without doing that. And if you don’t believe me, read three or four verses from the letter of St. James and you will find him judging all sorts of actions and behaviors at that time. Yeah, and what we really can’t do is judge what people are going to do, what they are going to be like, what their final destiny is, because even somebody who’s as far away from God as you can imagine a human being, they are not at this point beyond redemption. They have the capacity to cease doing evil, begin doing good, and therefore the way that practically works itself out in the world is, you know, you should always, insofar as you attend to your own needs, necessarily try to keep doors open with people. Not always going to be possible, but if it’s something that you can manage without, let’s say, destroying yourself, then it’s a good thing. Then you can’t ever say this person’s beyond redemption, therefore we can simply dispose of them. You also can’t claim that in their place you would have done better than they did. Ooh, dang. And I don’t, you know, you have to judge for yourself. And you have to judge for yourself. And, you know, just as I said, I think that’s the only way that we can do it. Ooh, dang. Yeah, that’s true. And I don’t, you know, you have to judge for yourself. There’s nothing, there’s no treaty against judging for yourself, right? It’s treaty of, and it’s not even treaty of judging others. It’s only treaty of making certain types of judgments in certain situations, usually about the future, not about the past or the present, what’s happening, or what’s happened. And time is a real tricky thing because everybody keeps ignoring time. And then we end up with weird things like, like an explanation being equivalent to a prediction. A prediction is something you make about the future. An explanation is something you make about something that already occurred. And so you get confused and say, well, this guy’s got a really good explanation for why this happened. And therefore he must be smart. No, there’s lots of explanations, good explanations for why all kinds of things have happened. But a lot of them compete with one another. So it’s very hard to tell when you’re talking about the past if that person actually has any insight or if they just have a bunch of explanations that aren’t helpful to understand what’s going to happen in the future. OK, so two things on that. Mark made some extra points, but I want to go back to the whole judgment thing. First, I think that the first thing that I want to talk about is the question of what is the future. First, there but for the grace of God go I. Now, that’s often interpreted now as meaning luck, like, oh, you know, you know, God’s given me this grace of this luck that I’ve done. But I actually think that the origin of that saying is more along the lines of of having gratitude for the grace that one has attained that has kept one safe. Right. That actually it’s that grace is actually a gift that one actually has to work at at receiving and maintaining. And so when you see someone in dire straits that, you know, you’re the that the original that saying was not really talking about luck. It’s not grace. God doesn’t give grace out willy nilly. It’s actually about it’s like, OK, well, you know, that’s an example of what happened because of because I, you know, I have attained some grace and I’m grateful for that grace. And just on that. But how do we judge? I think, you know, it’s a big part, I think, of the prohibitions about about judging is is that like all judges are all our judgments need to be deferred to the ultimate judge who is Christ. Right. At the end. So we can’t, you know, and that’s more what the prohibition about is like you can’t render final judgment. You’re not Christ is in charge of final judgment, but you’re still called upon to discern. In fact, the future final judgment would be judgment in the future. Yeah. Not judgment in the present for your act, for your act. Also not just for your actions. Right. But the judgment of Christ is judging everybody judging you. Right. Except as a result of judging everybody. So, again, this is a, you know, there’s two components. There’s a time component plus the placement component. Right. Judging other people can be problematic. Although, again, I would argue it’s necessary for discernment. You have to have discernment. Making a judgment for you to make an action is very different from making a judgment of somebody else’s actions, which is very different from making a judgment about what actions should be for other people in the future. Like those are three different conditions with no overlap. Yeah. So, and, and, but from our talk about the theological virtues, there’s also from those are the cardinal virtues, which are the results of the three are the four hours of and, you know, I think it’s connected to Verveky’s for piece of knowledge. But one of the, and this is really important because this has been lost since the Enlightenment, especially over the last hundred, like 150 years, we’ve we’ve really the, the, the meaning of the word justice has drifted dramatically from the original Christian concept of justice justice. When the Christian conception was an individual virtue. Right. So this idea that justice is something you get from on high or from the state is completely alien to the Christian thinking. Every Christian is called upon to become a just as a virtue. And if you think about this whole justice getting justice from a society, how on earth are we supposed to have a justice from a society if our society is not made up of just men. Right. So the, the, the justice and discernment is something that you actually have to cultivate. And, right. And that’s, and that’s, it’s something we’re bad at, but we have to build as a virtue. Yeah. Justice is the is the thing that that that requires judgment. Right. And judgment requires discernment. Right. So they the three concepts are tied up and build them on one another. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it’s actually of, I think it’s connected. Well, it’s connected to the four beasts, I think, are representative of also over vacay’s knowledge is so it’s the justice is the lion. Right. So it’s the four, four beasts and revelations like you know we could have the whole side thing. But, but it’s it’s just this is lying but it’s also in in in in for vacay’s models. It’s procedural knowledge, right. So it’s about bringing out the outness is the proper outcomes in in the world, right, it’s a kind of wisdom or sophistication where you’re actually like the purpose is to bring better outcomes out in the future in the world. It like to correct the person but also to correct the state of the world right is in and how you do that is requires this sort of finesse to correct the person and you can ignore the world because it’ll take care of itself. Yeah, I mean, correct the state of affairs, right. I mean like the world may sound a little bit too bad. Correct you. You don’t correct the state of affairs, correct you. Everything else takes care of itself. Like, this idea that we have agency that far outside of our own is crazy talk. Well hold on. I mean I don’t I’m not I’m not trying to correct the whole world here I’m talking about. I’m called, I’m called upon to be just of my flock of am I as a father, right, I need to be a just father. So I need to when I am bringing about justice in my family, the way I do that is that I correct the character of my son or my the transgressor, and I try and restore the order and peace in the family, right, that’s that’s that’s what justice is right is that. So that’s that’s more than just the score the order in yourself. More importantly, because as the result of correcting your children, you’re going to have to transgress, and then therefore you’re going to need to make up for that transgression as well. Yeah, restore the equilibrium. Yeah, great. And also the, the inability to, to control another person’s behavior force them into an outcome that you desire for them. And that’s a good point because virtues are primarily something that would perfect our own souls, right. Yes, and it’s certainly you know being around virtuous people does help, like, with your own virtue but it doesn’t cause it, it’s just, it’s sort of a secondary causality. So what do you guys make of, you know, we all hear, do not judge you will be judged. But immediately after that Jesus says for with the same judgment you will pronounce you will be judged. And with the measure you use it will be measured out to you. Right. Right. Well it’s it that’s a treatise against hypocrisy. Right. In other words, if you’re going to if you’re going to call somebody out for their for their lack of chastity you’d better be chased. That’s it. Right. So again, it doesn’t say don’t judge. It’s not what it says at all. Just just just careful with your judgment, taking it out of context. Right. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye. Right. Right. Right. But that would that says judgments okay if you apply it equally. Right. Yes. Judgments fine. No problem with judgment. Stop using it as a way around the responsibility to call out evil, because that’s one of my big things right but make make final cause great again. Call out evil and do it poorly. Right. These are these are two big themes with me and also guard. Fine. All right guys. Well I’m going to get going. So I tried to think of something funny to say about leaving and final causality and all that but I couldn’t so. You know that Protestant problem yours. I’m taking care of it. I’ll leave that to your imagination of how I’m doing that. Yeah. Very good. Always good to have you. Andrew. You’re my number one customer. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Well, see you next Sunday. I hope. See you next Sunday. Yeah, I am planning on doing this not on Christmas though. No. Okay. Yeah, I probably wouldn’t feel bad about that either either. Yeah. All right. Well, have a good night. Yeah. Bring it back to this comment here or what father. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, we’ve we I think we’ve gotten to the bottom on justice. At least as we need, we need to go. We need to go as far as we need to go. We’ve got, I think a new friend of the channel I don’t think I’ve ever seen this Jordan around so hello Jordan. Good to have you with us. Mark, can you go into the good living on to access both the qualitative and the quantitative? I want to hear father Eric’s thoughts. So I guess you go first and I go second. That’s right. I go first to your channel. Maybe, maybe. So I just am not disagreeable enough to hang with you to Eastern enough or North East. Well, that’s a big problem. That’s a big problem. Midwestern are here. You know, I just I sure wouldn’t want to make anybody feel bad by interrupting them. That would just be horrible. You have your own your own manipulation techniques over there in the Midwest. We’re well aware of your little tricksiness. So yeah, I mean, so I, I find it the most useful way to visualize this is a horizontal and vertical axis, right? So the horizontal axis is the axis of quantity. It’s counting one, two, three, four or five. Right. And then measuring to write and measure. Well, you need counting to measure. Right. And then that provides you the measurement. So all measurement is horizontal axis. All of it. All of it. It’s all quantitative or quantity. Right. I think sometimes people don’t get the connection between quantity and measurement, but there are some things that are not measurable. You know, like how much we’ll get to that. Okay. We’ll get to that. So you’re right. It’s good. It’s a good call out. Right. Like measurement exists on this horizontal axis. And then what’s happening there is that that’s measurement allows you to make a distinction of good and bad. Right. Or better and worse through that mechanism. Okay. But I think the way to think about it and the thing that now Verveki’s finally caught up to after like three years is there’s another axis, a more important axis, right. Which is the vertical axis. And I know people try to talk about this. They talk about qualia and the types of qualia are very scientific. That’s nonsense. It’s quality. There’s an axis of quality. The one feature or the one important feature of the vertical axis of quality is that it does not contain any measure. Measurement doesn’t apply on the vertical axis at all, which is which is not saying much. Right. But there’s still so there’s good and bad. Right. There’s good and evil on the on the vertical. And that seems to be how that works. And then you can do clever things with this. Like Sally Jo did where you where you have a man on one side and the man looks across the horizontal axis and down at the woman’s feet. Right. And the woman looks across the horizontal axis and up at the star above the man’s head. Right. And then she’s pointing there. He’s pointing down below. Right. They can both see quantity, but quantity works differently for men and women. So, for example, and I guess this is I didn’t read the book, but apparently there’s an example in men are from Mars, women from Venus, where what happens is the man goes up to the star above the man’s head. Right. And in the woman’s mind, he gets one point. OK. And now the you know, he rests for a while. Right. And then and then the woman’s like, are you going to take up the whole thing? Right. And then he’s like, OK, I’m going to take up the whole thing. Right. And then he’s like, OK, I’m going to take up the whole thing. Right. And then he’s like, OK, I’m going to take up the whole thing. Right. And in the woman’s mind, he gets one point. OK. And now the you know, he rests for a while. Right. And then and then the woman’s like, are you going to take out the trash? And the man’s all right. Whatever. And he goes like, look, I spent four hours in the car. What’s going on? So he goes and takes out the trash. OK. And now in the woman’s mind, he gets one point. So now he has two points in the man’s mind. He’s like, man, my point quarter for the week is done. I got like 22 points because I’ve spent four hours working on the car. Right. So they’re both using a measure of quantity, but the quality value is different because the woman doesn’t isn’t assigning the quality value to the time. And so it plays out in real life. Like you can see these dynamics happening all over the place, not just between archetypal male and female, we’ll say, but also in other areas where people are just. Time is not the guarding factor. And that makes sense because if you’re a woman, it doesn’t matter how long it takes to clean the house. You need a clean house mentally or you’ll go insane. That’s technically true. Right. Whereas the man doesn’t care. Correct. Like my office was a mess for how long? And now it’s perfectly clean. So, you know, I didn’t care. The house is still a mess. The back room is full of all the stuff that was in the office. Who knows how long it’ll take me to get through all that and actually clean it up. Right. So so it’s the valuation is different because the valuation of quality is not the same as the valuation of quantity. And so it’s very difficult to talk about, which is better along the vertical axis, which is more towards the good and which is evil or more towards the evil. It’s very difficult to talk about. Yeah, that is. I don’t know how I mean it would it would always be like somehow like a measurement of virtue in charity. Right. Like, yes. Like how much how much does this action glorify God if you’re going to use good and evil as that vertical access. Right. And then and then I would argue you can’t actually measure those things. Right. And so there’s two aspects in that case to judgment. Right. Which is, are you judging the quantitative effect of something? And are you doing that in the here and now? Right. Or are you judging the quality of what you said? Right. And so I went into this the other day. I thought this was a good example. So I’ll use it again. When when I ask somebody how their day is. Right. Let’s suppose I call up my uncle or something and I say, hey, you know, how you doing? How’s your day? Right. There are two possible outcomes to that, actually. So most people think, oh, that’s a nice act. Well, that’s going to cheer him up. Right. Because somebody cares about it. If you’re depressed, that may make you worse. You may commit suicide. I’m not joking. Like this happens in the real world. Like more often than you realize. If you don’t know that I’m being serious, you this happens. Okay. So So you can’t judge it by the outcome. Right. You can’t. Like, it’s not it’s not possible. And also, the action may not like in the moment where I say, you know, how’s your day going? My day sucks. I don’t know why you’re calling. Right. But but that may only last for a few minutes. And then after you get off the phone, the day may improve for that person because you called and they were able to express their frustration. They don’t know. Like, I don’t know. So how do you judge an action like that, when you don’t know what the outcome is going to be? And it could actually be the worst possible outcome? Because I would argue to some extent, that’s everything you do. Like everything you do has that potential. Which is why a virtue ethics system wouldn’t put outcomes at the center, although they’re not they’re not a matter of indifference either. It’s a matter of am I doing? Am I in accord with this? Ideal? Am I am I aiming aiming in the right direction? And that’s all you can manage. You know, that’s That’s definitionally virtue ethics or don’t put that at the center. They can still take them into consideration. That’s yeah, if you’re dealing with consequences, and that’s consequential, consequentialism, right? Which is always a horrible idea. You end up with trolley problems. It’s the worst. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and that’s, did you hear Sally Joe’s thing about the trolley problem? Somebody took her the trolley problem once. And I think she was in art school or something. And they said, you know, here’s the here’s the trolley problem. How do you resolve this? And she said, who’s the idiot that came up with this? Like he stood this is a dumb question. Like, just don’t come up with the problem. Don’t tie people up on to railroad tracks. Like that’s the solution to this. Right, right. Like, that’s the whole thing. Like, like, if people are caught up in these fake examples of things that either don’t happen in the real world or don’t happen the way they characterize them, right? And then saying, well, see, this is a possible problem in the world. Is it? Is it really a possible problem in the world? Are you sure? You’re pragmatic epistemology showing, Mark. You’re pragmatic epistemology showing. Yeah, yeah. Well, pragmatism for the win. I went over that earlier too with Jacob. So yeah. Well, I think it’s actually I think what the more insidious side of it is you’re trying they’re trying to reduce morality to pathos. Right. Because they’re actually saying, well, there’s these urges. Yeah, emotions. Yeah. And I think that the fundamental part of Christianity is that it’s the Pontius Pilate questions put forward in Mark and that is that, you know, they have to choose between Jesus Christ, the sovereign power of the Lord, and the power of the Lord. You know, they have to choose between Jesus Christ, the sovereignty of the logos and Barabbas, the murderous revolutionary, which represents the supremacy of the pathos, which is like the doing the things that that might my feeling over logic over over God. My my feeling is supreme. And what they’re and what you see in those the insidious under underbelly of these trolley problems and what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to find urges. They’re trying to find it’s like, okay, well, this is this is what’s really going on. See, there’s there’s no there’s no logos. There’s no God. What it all boils down to all the all this all this this this this frills you’re putting on it. It’s still just pathos. It’s still just urges. You’re still just like you have like this intuition or this sense of what’s right. It’s passion and it’s emotion. It’s not anything else. Right. That’s that’s that’s and that’s what the trolley problems are trying to. It’s not true, but that’s what the trolley problems are trying to put forth or expel. And and also it’s a manipulation to see a superior. It’s like, oh, right. Because look, if I’m an if I’m an agent in the world and we’re all agents in the world, are you right? Like you were born in the world. Now you’re an agent in the world. Sorry. There’s a lot of downsides. Right. There’s lots of good stuff, but there’s lots of downsides. But if I’m an agent in the world and I don’t have ethics like Sam Harris, because Sam Harris never had ethics ever at any point. Right. But I think I do. Right. I’m going to throw the trolley problem at you to bring you down to my level where you also don’t have ethics because you still have to kill people. Ha ha. Now you’re equal to me. Right. It is this equally because they don’t want the judgment. Right. Because any ideal is a judge and they don’t want judgment. So they have to get rid of ideals as such. Not not physical ideals. That’s how Peterson talks about them. And he’s right. But the implication of that is the concept of an ideal or a platonic form, which is actually the same thing, has to go because otherwise you’re being judged and you’re being judged for your actions and you’re being judged by something bigger than you because virtues are bigger than you. That’s why you need distributed cognition to understand virtues. You can’t get them from a book by yourself on your own with your own personal practices. You can’t meditate your way into them. If they’re too big to understand, you need help. You need a church. You can’t grow in patience without the Dairy Queen drive-through taking forever. But we are judging Sam Harris. I think that’s what we’ve concluded. I never bring Sam Harris. That’s always other people. I have a video on that. I have two videos. Two videos pointing out the error because I think it’s important to point out the error because the Sam Harris error is an error we’re all prone to. So it’s important to know about it. Yeah, and I like what you said about, Mark, I like what you said about this idea that virtues have to come from distributed cognitions that you actually can’t conceive of a virtue by yourself. That’s a very interesting idea. I’m going to have to I’m probably going to be playing one as I sleep playing with it. Sure. Yeah. It’s right in some sense. It sort of strikes me as like, yeah, that’s a good point. You could look at it from like a developmental point of view, right? And it’s like, how do you teach a child a virtue, you know, and it’s like they have to learn it is like no little mark, you don’t get to have you don’t get to have ice cream for every single one of your meals, right? Like your parents are teaching you temperance at that point, right? So like even in a developmental way of looking at it, you need other people to to learn virtues. You need other people to like form you socially, you know, right, because you’ve got all these weird idiosyncratic ideas and impulses, and not many of them are going to be appropriate for the world. And you can only get that feedback by, you know, being an annoying teenager. And having people say, you know, when you just kind of run in your mouth like that, nobody nobody gives you feedback. But then when you’re playing the game properly, when you’re participating, well, we’ll give you positive feedback. Well, that’s you into our group and our to our game. And I think that’s actually. Yeah, and that’s actually something else that we’ve seen dropped out of society. And I don’t know if it’s it goes as far back as 150 years, but certainly in in my generation, probably generation before that, since Lisa’s 60s. This whole the idea of conscience for more Christian formation and the formation of conscience has just dropped out. Right. We just assume that everyone has a sense of good and evil that’s equally valid, which it’s not. Right. I think that everyone is born with an intuitive, rough sense of good and evil, but that has to be formed. They actually have to go to Thomas from formation to actually grow in wisdom and grow in discernment. Like Jordan Peterson talks points out with Pinocchio with the Jiminy. Crickett is originally a very bad conscience, and he has to through the story actually develop as a good conscience. And that’s partly what Catholicism has to offer is that conscience formation. Thomas Aquinas would say that the moral law is imprinted. Now, listen, if you actually studied it, Mark, you’d love Thomas Aquinas. He’s super practical. Right. The moral law. It’s just funny. It’s like, you know, this this video is sponsored by Thomas Aquinas. It is. It’s 100% sponsored by Thomas Aquinas. That’ll be like a watermark or something. You need another you need another thing to flash on the screen. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m going to do that now. I’m going to do that. So so he said that the moral law is imprinted on the human soul. Right. So it’s not there, but the space for it to slip in there is there. Right. But it won’t go there until you’re it’s either taught to you explicitly or exemplified. Yeah. Right. And I don’t know what he would say about the possibility of it being permanently stunted. So I’ll just stop talking then because I don’t know what he would say. This is actually this is interesting because this this connects to modern neuroscience and cognitive science. Right. But so what Aquinas is saying there because like it Pickers book, the language instinct. And I think it’s the 90s. You know, he was it was that, you know, he was he was talking about the whole of it, the debunking, the tabula rasa, especially particularly he uses his special specialization language. But and he’s talking exactly about what you’re talking about with with what Aquinas knew a thousand years before that, apparently. Which he he picked up from Gregory the Great or Dionysius or the Stoics or from Plato. But this idea of the imprint, right, is that we, you know, we’re not born with language, but we’re born with like an imprint that we’re ready to pick up language from the environment, from, you know, what Marx is from the distributed cognition. We were born ready to come out into this. That’s affordance. Right. Yeah. Yeah, there’s an affordance for language that we’re born with. Right. And then that’s the ability to do the language, to actually perform the language is exacted from our prehensile tongue eating device. And yeah, and other right other things. Right. That’s that’s that’s yeah. I look I’m I’m I’m extremely hopeful that I’m extremely hopeful that science will eventually catch up to the religious tradition that already discovered all this stuff. And it’s been talking about for thousands of years. Will they recognize that that I’m not hopeful for, but I’m hopeful that they’ll catch up eventually. It would make for a better world. I could go for that. It’s it’s it’s it’s extra cooling capacity. That’s why we’re all bald. It’s like it’s just we’re bored bare metal cognition. Yeah. You know, grass doesn’t grow on a busy street. Yeah. And then my my favorite is is that God created a few perfect heads and then covered the rest with hair. Yes. Yes. Can confirm also. Oh, man. Yeah. You know, I think that there was a really good sort of final point there about this sort of idea of affordances. And there’s also critical periods that we’re that with language. And I think there’s certain certain critical periods with morality, too. Now, actually, something that, you know, calling out the Marxist and postmodernists, why I think Paulo Fieri is a truly evil person is because he was actually, you know, he came up with this process of conscientious, which is really the inversion of developing Christian conscience. Right. So he’s he actually found a way to divert you people take away their virtues to try and make them govern purely by pathos. Right. So it’s in many ways it’s it’s making people wretched so that they are dependent on the system and always demanding revolution because they can’t take care of things themselves. So all they can do is complain and that and he’s become the foundation of our of our modern education system, at least in North America and now spreading more throughout the world. He started he messed up South America, particularly Brazil. And then he was brought over. And now he’s you know, you don’t put it. Look, I mean, I don’t think these people know what they’re doing. I mean, people assign a lot of confidence and rationality and understanding to people who clearly don’t have it like that. Like, like this is the problem of Sam Harris. Like, he’s very articulate. Right. But he’s actually not very bright. Like, he’s actually not very smart. I agree with you. I agree with you, Sam Harris. I agree with you, Sam. So he’s not everywhere. Paulo Fieri is and Paulo, Paulo Fieri. He had a deep understanding here, right. So he actually had to understand the system well enough to say, no, this is how I can create more wretched people, more revolutionaries. It’s like I. So there’s more than one way to do it, too. But again, I mean, look, when you when you when you assign these things to single people and then you say this guy knew what he was doing and we get into experiments like it’s. Yeah, OK. But lots of people did like Masmer wrote a book with experiments, too. And his stuff didn’t actually take off except one very famous person who who took it to heart. Right. So these things like it’s not inevitable that somebody wrote a book that it’s a well researched book that anybody read that anything’s going to come of it. And that’s where we get in this danger because people tend to fall into the scientific concept that if a thing can be done, it is inevitable. And that that’s false. Like, it’s provably false. It takes like five seconds to devon. OK. And that’s the problem, because we’re paying attention to quantity instead of quality and maybe all quality requires distributing cognition to understand. And that’s why we outsource our sanity at the same time. So I see that there’s there’s a battle between good and evil, that there is spiritual warfare and there is an arms race that comes with that spiritual warfare. Right. That the and the lot the battle line is between every human heart. It’s between good and evil. And there is theological religions which are which which are say say say say psycho technology on the good side. Right. Because they’re helping with discernment. But there’s also we’re also attached to our sin and we’re also attached to evil. So there is a demand, a natural demand for psycho technology that blocks discernment. Right. We have that. We have that already. Like this is this is one of my problems with John’s work. He’s like pretending we don’t have all this. We already have it. We’ve had it all along. He’s rebelling against it and rejecting it. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have it. That just means he doesn’t like the answer. So, yeah, but my point is that there are people who create it with evil systems and there there are people who do this consciously. So I don’t know. Like, are you I don’t I mean, I’m not really because I think Paulo Fieri is is probably like at least a one in ten thousand evil and probably a one in and also one in ten thousand intelligence. Right. Like, yeah, that’s that’s fine. But look, you’ve got BF Skinner. OK, I don’t know if you know much about BF Skinner. So 90 percent of BF Skinner’s work is awesome and excellent. And it’s really good. Right. Except he was an idealist. So what did he do? He said, you know what we can do? We can just give people positive feedback and they’ll become good people. This is he’s not the first, second or third, but he’s the first to do it in psychology. And because he was famous for all the other excellent work that he did, people have been trying ever since that to make that work in a psychological fashion. Now, of course, of course, I don’t know why I have to explain this to people, but it seems like even the likes of Brett Weinstein do not understand some of the basics of evolution. Evolution prefers negative signals. Period. End of statement. Positive signals are actually optional in an evolutionary framework. They’re completely fair enough. You don’t need that. Completely. Which is a neutral signal. It’s not a positive signal. It’s that the three signals, right? We don’t move away from pain and towards pleasure. That’s nonsense. It’s it’s observably incorrect. OK, there’s three states. Right. So the problem is, what do you do about BF Skinner? Did you say he was an evil genius who spread evil in the world? Because he wasn’t like that’s clearly not what happened. Right. But but that manifestation of evil, which didn’t come from BF Skinner, but he allowed into the world and used science to to forward is now we’re stuck with it to some extent. Was he an evil genius? No. Was he a genius? Yes. And see, this is the problem. Are there are there bad people like Sam Harris? I make the case that Sam Harris, because he was doing something he knew he couldn’t do and telling other people that they could do that fully knowing he couldn’t even do that. That to me is crossing a line. OK, you cannot. That is over the line. If you want to do something, you can do something you can’t do. You’re just deceiving yourself. But when you get up on a stage and you have an audience and you tell everybody else they can do this thing that you know full well you can’t do because it’s been demonstrated to you time and time again publicly. That’s crossing a line. That’s judgment. There’s discernment. Right. That’s a different case from the BF Skinner, who’s just an idealist and falls. He’s a root. He falls for a demon and the demon manifest stupid positivity, you know, garbage into the world. So maybe we’re I don’t know for that far apart. And I may just be under misunderstanding your your points are getting part of it. I don’t think that most of the evil that’s done in the world is done consciously. I think the BF the BF Skinner scenario is far more common, especially since any people, especially amongst great men and great people, is because if you have a disproportionate impact on the world, you’re also going to have a disproportionate negative impact because most actions in the world are going to have both a positive and negative. So if you so in a BF Skinner scenario, of course, he’s going to have like you said, right, most of his work is is is essential and wonderful. But, you know, there’s this negative impact that came from it as well. And part of it was from his overreaching. And all I’m saying is that there are because there is this investment in like negative psycho technology that there are, you know, there are evil people like there are evil people and there are talented people and there are evil, talented people who have written things or have had. But first of all, they’ve set out to have a negative impact on the world and they use their greatness to have a dis a disparate negative impact on the world. Yeah, like Foucault and Derrida and yeah and others for sure. Yeah, yeah. And Heidegger, right. But like Hegel and Marcuse, who came up earlier and and and Fieri and and Luke Hodge and in sort of a special bucket of like they were consciously they knew what they were up to and they didn’t. Look, if you want to if you want to state that they’re evil and do the statement that I made about Sam Harris, then that’s fine. Right. Right. You know, or Jordan Peterson’s excellent and and and not not loud enough formulation. Right. He said, there’s there’s a place or there’s a sorry, there’s a darkness so dark that you know you’re going there to increase the darkness and do a dark thing. Right. Yeah, that is a correct formulation of evil. One of many. But one for sure. And nobody, you know, Verveki and Paggio didn’t say that’s an excellent formulation for evil. I agree because they were too busy defending something that is indefensible, by the way, just so we’re clear. Yeah, but Luke Hodge and Fieri both wrote their seminal works after they had already been exiled from their countries of origin for effing things up so much. Right. But they both had these failed disasters, communist revolutions in the countries and they were forced into exile, avoiding murder. And then people said, like, OK, these guys who destroyed their countries, you know, let’s let’s let’s hear what they have to say. Right. Like it’s a little mind boggling. Yeah. So but yeah, no, I agree fully that it’s yeah, I think I think we’ve we’ve reached like agreement like we’re both in the same place. And I have no problem if you want to call out evil and use the formulation to prove it. Right. Like because and that is the sort of thing I’m talking about. Like, yes, we need to do more of that. We need to say this particular person like Foucault evil, like there’s no there’s no way around that. I’d love to hear a defense. I’d love to rip that person apart because I will put it like instantaneously because that’s well, we’re crossing the line. I’m I’m I’m a fan of thought crime. If it involves harming children, I’m like, I’m OK with that crime thing. I’m cool with it. As well for that one case, I’m OK. I’m OK. Totally. Because I’m an extremist on this issue. I am. I know the report thing. Yes. Minority report would be OK with me, not in cases of murder, but in case of harming children. Then I’m fine with minority. I’m signing up tomorrow. You should you should look into why Lukacs was in exile. It’s pretty nasty. Like he actually implemented what Foucault what Foucault talked about doing. I think it’s Hungary. I forget the country that he did it, but it was basically. Yeah, well, well, again, yeah. I mean, if you can make the case like I made the case with Sam Harris, the problem isn’t that he couldn’t do what he said he could do. The problem is it was demonstrated to him that he couldn’t do what he could do. And he told other people not only that he could do it, which is, you know, a minor crime, but he said they could do it. And that is that’s crossing the line. Like you’ve gone you’ve crossed over over, you know, across the zone of sin and into the zone of evil or something. And I think that’s actually really important because if we don’t talk about this stuff, we can’t call it out and say, no, don’t listen to Foucault. He was evil. Like, don’t listen to Rousseau. Rousseau was evil. Like, well, this isn’t that hard. Like, just throw out all the work. It’s like, oh, but Mark, you’re going to get the time wrong. The twice a day, the broken clock was right. Oh, well, I think I’ll I think I’ll live. I think I’ll be fine. Like, it’s OK to throw out those. Right. It’s OK to throw out the 99 percent bad stuff, you know, with the one percent good stuff. It’s fine. You’re not going to lose much. It’s OK. It’s OK to have a small loss. A small loss is better than a large loss. Yeah. Yeah. OK. And so, you know, you’re using the words sin and evil and evil. I think Catholics. Yeah. Right. So I mean, you’re making a differentiation. What’s wrong with the differentiation? Because I think it’s important. Let me. OK. You want to share what the difference is. Well, can I? Sin would be kind of always some kind of evil. We would we would talk about, you know, kind of grave evil and very grave evil. I think the aim is aim. But let’s see, let’s see. I’ll put I’ll sort of try and save it and see if Mark will agree with the way that I save it. So like I was talking about impact. Right. And I’m going to actually tie it to. Toby Luke and it’s at Shopify is he would actually, which is one of Canada’s few innovative billion dollar companies, he would actually fire people based on lack of impact. So if you screwed up or you did something bad, like you did something and had a negative outcome, that wasn’t what he would fire you for. It would be if you were doing nothing with passivity that he’d fire you for. Like he’d actually look is like, are you trying to do an impact in this company? And and that it’s so the impactful things is what he was looking for. And because he accepted the idea of like any positive impact is going to have some negative consequences with it, too. So the first thing I need to weed out is the people who are having no impact. Then after I’ve weeded out the impact list, people I have to start looking at, OK, who are the people who are having the best, the most positive impact? The people who are having no impact are the first ones we need to get rid of. And here is the same idea with with with sin. I think your distinction between sin and evil. Right. So anything like people with good in their hearts, good intentions, they’re going to do they’re going to aim at good and they’re still going to create sin. We’re all sinners. Exactly. Right. So there’s still going to be sins. Inevitable. Sin’s inevitable. Inevitable. Right. Evil is not inevitable. Right. So we would. So sorry, Alexander, you go ahead and finish. Oh, yeah. So but but so the distinction Mark is making, and I think Father and Eric would would phrase it differently, but I think it’s sort of accept the distinction on some level is that evil is aiming out, aiming for that negative, those negative consequences. So you’re actually and even those negative consequences like God will still use the excuses, the works of the devil to bring about good. And that’s where the devil is always so angry. But even those those so they’ll be disparate impact. But the evil you’re seeing is is is aiming at those negative consequences. What I would say, disruption of discernment and and away from Christ. But you know, you probably would frame it differently. But that evil. But that’s what evil is. So it’s people. It’s the it’s what’s in your heart. If you’re aiming at evil, then it’s it’s evil. And sin is you. Sin for you is aiming at good, but they’re still evil coming out of it. That’s this. That’s that’s sin. Sorry, Father. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. That’s going to get into the same problem that Bishop Aaron and Jordan Peterson ran into. We’re talking about the Columbine killers is. Is this idea that it’s probably has more to do with a definition of words and how we’re using them than it is any actual like real disagreement. But they say that evil, considered in itself, is a privation of a good thing that ought to be there. Right. So it’s like, you know, like, let’s say that I had my pinky cut off at a farm accident that we could call that a physical evil because the form of the human person is that you would have five fingers on each hand. That form has been disfigured. So we would call that a physical evil. That pinky is gone. It should have been there. So it’s a privation of a do good. They would say they would say I’m just I’m going to lay out the argument so that you will know the next time you’re talking to a Catholic that this is an accurate map. Right. Well, I will know better than to talk to Catholics. Right. Right. So that’s the way we define evil is a privation of a do good and saying that it is the the object of the rational appetite. The will is the good. And so it’s actually impossible. So the way they would talk about gravity of evil is how disordered are you getting. Right. So we could talk about different gravities of evil. We could go from like less evil to more evil. There’s a there’s a there’s a spectrum of quality or anti quality. And then if you are evil and what you’re making them equally inevitable. And that’s that’s where my objection is. How how do they become a spectrum equals on a spectrum? Then you’re not getting to zero. So I got to head out. I mean, see you. Yeah. I see you as the hell is the residue and revert to Viva Cristo Rey. Amen. The non being would eventually write if we’re going to talk about evil as non being it would eventually get to zero. Right. Like there’s a point where something will will dissipate and fade out of existence. So. So it gets to zero. Does that make sense? Am I saying things well? No, I could. Yeah. OK. While you’re alive, you’re evil. Like, no, no, no, it’s not inevitable. Evil is something that we not only we but we bring about in the world or increase in the world. It has to be like this. The formulation doesn’t work. It sounds like the Christians or the Catholics in particular cave to to some to to to some equality doctrine somewhere down the line. Is this a well, I guess, I guess, I guess I guess Augustin Augustin really f this up. Right. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. This goes probably to get around to get around to equalize everybody and say, well, I may have been a sinner my whole life, but you were too. And therefore, we’re all evil together. I’m not saying no, I I’m really not feeling like you’re engaging with the arguments right here. Now, look, again, like if evil is inevitable, then why do you need evil and see it? They’re both inevitable. Now we’re just now even overlap in definition. Right. It’s because you’re not you’re not perfect. Like, OK, yeah, really? This is like original sin is real. I didn’t get the message the first time. So you’re denigrating either evil or sin. You’re denigrating evil. But but, you know, an increasing sin. But I don’t see the point in having overlapping definitions like that because it’s not helpful and especially it’s not helpful because what it means is there’s no point in fighting evil because it’s inevitable. So why are we even bothering, you know, trying to fight it at that point? I think the way this plays itself out is in the distinction between venial sin and mortal sin. They are not treated the same way inside the Catholic Church. Right. I agree. And I and I and I think that mortal sin is closer to an evil. Right. That still leads you with which is why I’m saying this is probably more semantic discussion than it is like an actual discussion. And how we would behave. Maybe. Yeah. Was Foucault evil is the question. So let’s get the Church’s opinion on was Foucault evil like like from the clip with with Peterson and Vervecky and Pichot. And this is see this is why this is a big problem for me. When somebody comes up with a good formulation for evil and they state it and they make their case, you should pat them on the head, give them a cookie and throw them a parade and point out to everybody that that because it’s really important. Like it’s fantastically important because it’s the one thing we’re not doing with effective altruism and all these other ridiculous substitutions for ethics. And if the truth isn’t going to do that, then like we’re doomed. Like I actually mean like we are actually doomed. The Church should be like, yes, Peterson, you’re correct. Go boy, go. And by the way, everybody else listen to this kind of a formulation. I listen to everything Jordan Peterson says. That’s fine. But listen to this formulation. This man, when he says this thing is absolutely right, pay attention to that because this is important. Like because that is the most important job right there. I think so. I think so. So here it goes. Foucault was evil. Thank you. There you go. I had a second point in there. Where did it go? Yeah. So I actually find the idea of evil and let’s say deeper gravity of evil and deeper depravity as a more and more profound inversion of what’s actually good versus an apparent good. I find that really compelling in order to understand how people can behave internally, right? So we could think of what would be motivating somebody to do horrible things to children. And the way I’ve been able to try and think about it in a helpful way is to say that they get, let’s say maybe some kind of physical pleasure and sense of power and security in doing so, right? Now that is completely not how human beings are supposed to behave, that there is an order and that a child shouldn’t have to suffer so that you could experience those things. Right? So absolutely wrong. I don’t think it’s even psychologically possible to aim into the darkness, right? Like to… What I’m saying with Peterson’s point is that you can aim into the darkness. Like that’s his whole point with Foucault. He said it’s a place so dark that you know that you’re in the darkness and you know you’re going there to do dark, dark things. Yeah. I’m just not sure. So the way we could take the Columbine killers. Right. Well, that was the example he brought up and we’re all Peterson fans. Is that they had this projection of what they thought a good world should look like. Right. And then they compared that projection to what they actually experienced. And they decided they were going to punish the world. But based on based on that projection of what their idea of a just utopian society would look like. So that was actually the good they were tending to but completely upside down because you know your fantasies and fantasies shouldn’t… Yeah, you have to assume the the incorrectness of Plato who was wrong about at least one thing. And this is certainly something he was absolutely provably wrong about, which is that everybody seeks the good. And that’s not true. Some people say my life is hell and I want more people with me. Because I want to increase my tribe. And so they would rather make hell for the people who aren’t in it to feel as though they are not alone. Like that definitely happens. People do this all the time. You can just observe it in real life. Like you don’t need you don’t need some grand narrative about about the Columbine shooting. And the problem with these formulations is that it’s a cute formulation. Right. But I can tell you for a fact it is wrong. Absolutely wrong. I’ve met people. I know people. I’ve been to places in my own mind. There are times when you say this world is not good enough and therefore it’s got to go. OK. There’s no goodness in that statement. You can’t make the argument that because you’re comparing it against some ridiculous utopia that you’re going for the good. Because you’re not going for the good. If you were going for the good you’d say the thing wrong with this world is that I’m stuck in hell so I’m just going to kill myself. Fair enough. Maybe in that case you’re going for the good. But not I’m going to take everybody with me. Now you’re definitely not trying to enact the good in any way shape or form. And that look it may be a translation problem with Plato’s stuff. I don’t know. My my my lobes got stolen. Otherwise I could look it up for my damn self or at least have some chance of understanding it. Right. So it’s just a wrong formulation. It’s clearly not the best explanation. It’s not the only explanation and it’s not the correct explanation. And there’s lots of formulations like that where you can always turn it into something that looks like someone’s going towards the good. But that that’s the fact that you can do that is just postmodern gobbledygook in my mind. And it’s not valid. Some people are trying to enact evil on this earth whether consciously or unconsciously. Right. Through possession or not. And sometimes not. And the Columbine kids they weren’t possessed. They they were they were oppressed and they wanted people to join them in the hell that they had been feeling. And fair enough. I mean that that happened. But they were not trying to enact the good. And the fact that they may have been saying well these people have a good life and we don’t and we’re doing a comparison doesn’t mean they’re going towards the good. Even if the comparison is there that’s not correct. They’re they’re not going towards the good. They’re going towards a good that appears to them which is not the same thing. They’re not going towards a good that appears to them. They’re saying I want to bring everybody down to my level. People do this all the time. People say I want to bring I know what the good is and it’s way up here and I can’t get there. And so I want more friends where I’m at. So I’m going to do whatever like people do. I’ve had several friends over the years. Some of them are drug users. Right. Some of them are alcoholics. Some of them are what you might call sex addicts. Right. Every single one of them has said hey you need to do a drink or hey why don’t you come down we’re going to do some coke or whatever. Like every single one of them. It’s never not happened. Not once. Now it doesn’t work because I go yeah no thanks dude I’m cool. And you know normally people are like oh people pressure people into it. No one ever tries to pressure me into anything like that. Why. Because I’m an ideal and they know it and they know that they wish that they had the willpower that I have on those things anyway. Surely not all things because I’m a glutton for example. If you put food in front of me I’m going to eat all of it. Don’t put a lot of food in front of me I’ll get sick. You know so like I’m not I’m not claiming to be some paragon of virtue with respect to you know a large number of things we’ll say. But certainly I’m anti drug I’m anti alcohol and I’m anti like what would you call it casual sex or whatever right. Like those things are all those for me and I and I can talk hold the line all of them. There’s lots of things I can’t hold the line up with those three things I can hold the line on. But they know it and they respond positively to it and they drink less and do fewer drugs and do less casual sex. When I’m around actually and I know this for a fact and they know it. And in fact they usually say that like they’re aware of what’s going on and they’re aware that when they’re like you know hey come on and do this with me that what they’re trying to do is normalize their own behavior. In other words they want to enact bad things in the world so that they feel less bad because there’s more people doing bad things. Therefore it’s the norm. Therefore it’s not so bad. Like but that’s all about the bad that they know they’re doing. There’s no good in that equation whatsoever except there’s a point of comparison of where they’re falling short. Play it on correct. So so if I said to you that the good that a person who’s doing evil is is merely illusory and has no substance in the real world. Does that change. I mean it’s it’s an illusory good. It’s not actually. OK. So no no. I don’t don’t explain it again because I heard it the first time. No no you meant it for evil. I think God you know meant it for good like problem solved. And also perfection doesn’t exist. So if you’re you know if you’re trying to be a perfectly evil person all the time or something you’re going to fail. Like I said like like Russo was right about a couple of things. Right. So what that doesn’t mean you listen to anything that he says because he was only right about a couple of things. Same with Foucault. Like this is an easy equation. It’s like yeah you have to look at the balance. You have to make it. There has to be discernment and you have to make a judgment. And then you have to use that judgment wisely. Do I read Foucault. No I’m not going to read Foucault and Derrida. Why why would anybody do that. Just don’t do that. They’re bad people. Like it’s not hard. You don’t need it. The world was spinning before them too. Like obviously they didn’t add anything that added anything to the world because the world existed before them. It’s not that hard. OK. I think in most situations regarding discernment between good and evil you and I would make similar judgments. Probably. Yeah I can’t imagine why with with with at least nominally Catholic upbringing right. Without the church. But still like to Tom Holland’s point it’s still the water use women in Canada like you’re not getting out of that. Right. And I think we’re both aiming in the right same direction. Well I’m aiming for the good. And look my thesis is that it’s possible to not aim for the good. And most people aren’t aiming and that’s fine too. Like there’s a big neutral space. It’s probably the biggest space. The smallest space is the good. Right. But then there’s a huge and maybe it’s bigger but I don’t think so. But it might be. There’s a huge space of evil that is there. Right. And that’s why the good and evil are not opposites because it’s way more evil than good. Right. That’s why they can’t be opposites. It’s not a binary. It’s not a well we’ll find the worst evil and we’ll move away from it and therefore we’ll be moving to the good. That’s wrong. That’s just everything that rises must converge. Right. Well the convergence of the good is important and it’s important to aim for the good. Like that’s the most important thing. Where evil dissipates itself. Exactly. It spins itself out into nonbeing. Yeah. And things that dissipate are also evil found on earth. That’s the other thing that you have to recognize because that’s the hell we’re living in. Everybody’s values are dissipating. Right. My most my highest value is X and my highest value is Y and my highest value is Z. That’s a dissipation. And so it’s leading us not just to chaos but also to evil. Okay. Well as long as you’re willing to say that Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine and Aquinas were all wrong. I think we could just leave the disagreement on the table as a semantic and mostly theoretical matter because don’t. Everyone’s wrong about something. It’s important to know what your philosophers are wrong about or you shouldn’t adopt their philosophy. Okay. You’re not going to overturn a decade of seminary formation overnight, Mark. No, no, no. I’m not. I’m not trying to. Right. But this is why I why I don’t I try not to touch Carl Jung because I know he’s wrong about something. I have no freaking idea what it is. So I’m terrified of all his work. Literally. I just terrified of all of it because I can’t figure out where he went wrong. It was like getting a bowl of Cheerios with a shard of glass in it. Right. Exactly. Well, and that’s neat. And that is it. Like if you don’t know where where your favorite philosopher went wrong, then maybe you should avoid that philosophy until you figure it out. Right. Because otherwise it’s going to lead you astray for sure. And knowing when things are wrong is really important. And that is the one signal we get from evolution that the most important is the negative signal. Sure. I guess I guess the little bridge I’m trying to build here is that we would tend to behave a lot in the same ways, I think, even if we disagree about what the nature of ultimate evil is. Right. Except except the important thing that people will miss is they’ll use this idea that everybody’s going for the good to avoid the responsibility of judging their actions after the fact. Not in the future. After the fact and making a call on good and evil in the world so that we can use distributed cognition on evil. Because if we’re not talking about evil, there’s no distributed cognition on evil. And now nobody understands evil. And then everybody will get tricked by the devil. I think that’s literally part of the case that I made to to Vanderclay is about tolerance. It’s like when everything is tolerable and we very much injured that realm, or at least passed an important line of entering that realm, suddenly, you know, you think story time with transvestites or whatever the heck it’s called is OK. Right. And I don’t think there’s any version of the universe where that’s OK should be tolerated, should be accepted, should be allowed. Like I know like, no, this is we’ve clearly crossed the line there. It’s not ambiguous at all. But because people are going like, well, you know what? According to Plato, everybody’s doing what they think is best in the world and therefore they’re enacting some kind of a good. OK, maybe they’re enacting some kind of a good, but maybe that good is only for them. And I’m not interested in a good that’s only for you. So piss off. Like, I think that’s actually super important. We got to talk about evil. And if we’re not ready, willing and able to do that because we’re paying attention to people who didn’t want to deal with the hard problem of evil, then that’s a problem for me. I have more thoughts. I also have work tomorrow. I understand, sir. I appreciate your patience with my ranting. I hope the whole rest of YouTube is patient as well. Happy Sunday, everybody. Thanks for showing up. I plan on doing this again next week. So all seven of you see you next week. Take care. God bless.